STRATO

STRATO is a German hosting company, and its Homepage-Baukasten (website builder) is sold as the SmartWebsite plans. It is aimed at people with little or no web experience who want a site, a domain and mailboxes from one provider. The company's page says the builder suits beginners who want to stay independent of a web design agency and still have a professional homepage. Its pages are written in German, and the company says its data centers are in Germany.

This entry covers the builder at the url above. STRATO sells much else on the same domain, including WordPress hosting, V-Server, mail and a separate prompt-driven KI App & Site Builder. Those appear below only as context.

What you build and how

You build a small business site, a portfolio or a service page from design templates. The company says the templates are responsive, so the page adapts to phone, tablet and desktop, and that this applies to all templates in the SmartWebsite Basic, Plus and Pro plans. Templates give the site a logical structure, and you then replace the text and images with your own.

The AI features are the most developed part of the product, and they depend on the plan. All 3 plans include the KI-Website-Generator, the AI site generator. Plus and Pro add a KI-Textgenerator und -optimierer (AI text generator and optimizer) and a KI-SEO-Assistent. The page says the SEO assistant helps you write the metadata search engines read, and that it is "ab dem Plus-Tarif verfügbar" (available from the Plus plan). An AI image generator is also described, for turning quick ideas into pictures. Suggestions can be edited: the company writes that you can change an AI text suggestion to your own wishes or apply your own design ideas.

Plus and Pro also include STRATO marketingRadar, and Pro adds STRATO rankingCoach. The page does not explain either tool, so check the plan page for what they show you.

Each plan sets a page ceiling: a site with 5 subpages on Basic, 100 on Plus and 500 on Pro. Every plan comes with 1 domain included permanently, 1 SSL certificate and 2 mailboxes. The page also mentions simple management of appointments and bookings through your own site.

If you would rather not build it, the page offers a done-for-you option. STRATO's web design team builds the site with images and texts chosen from 29 industry templates and more than 130 designs, and also works on search visibility.

For selling, the page offers the SmartWebshop plans: "Nutzen Sie unsere SmartWebshop-Tarife, um Ihre bestehende Website um ein Online-Shopsystem zu erweitern", meaning you use them to extend an existing website with an online shop system. The company's home page also lists a standalone Webshop product and an E-Commerce Plug-in described as a shop integration for existing websites. The builder page gives no SmartWebshop prices or feature lists.

The home page adds AI assistants that attach to a site: a KI Chat-Assistent that answers service requests around the clock, a KI Telefonassistent for calls, and a KI E-Mail-Assistent. It also describes the separate KI App & Site Builder, where you prompt a professional website or app, with a flat rate without credit limits and a live site in a few minutes.

Plans and pricing

Prices are in euros. On a 1-month term, Basic costs 9 € a month, Plus 15 € and Pro 20 €, each with a 15 € setup fee. On a 12-month term, Basic is 0 € for the first month and then 7 € a month with no setup fee, and Plus is 1 € a month for 12 months and then 12 € a month, also with no setup fee. The home page advertises being online "ab 1 €".

Around the builder, the home page menu lists moving an existing domain to STRATO, a personal email address on your own domain described as ad-free, a newsletter tool for email marketing, Microsoft 365 mailboxes and legally compliant email archiving. A small business can therefore keep domain, mail and site with one provider. If the builder is too small, the same page lists WordPress hosting at 1 € a month for 12 months and then 9 €, which is the company's own step up for people who want WordPress.

Domains are priced separately on the home page per month: .de at 0,05 €.com at 0,60 €.eu at 0,20 €.online at 0,42 € and .store at 0,33 €.

On quality signals, the builder page says STRATO took 2nd place in a website builder comparison by Für-Gründer.de with a score of 1.7, and that reviewers praised easy operation, fair contract terms and solid equipment. It also says SmartWebsite placed 2nd in a 2025 community vote in which 22,057 users picked their preferred website provider. The home page says STRATO won the 2025 Service-Champion gold medal for experienced customer service and calls it Nr. 1 in web hosting. These are the company's statements about third-party results.

On security and sustainability, the home page lists an ISO/IEC 27001 certified information management system and 2 high-security data centers in Germany, so data falls under German implementation of GDPR (DSGVO). It says the company has run its data centers on 100% green power since 2008 and uses ISO 50001 energy management.

Who it suits and who it does not

STRATO suits a German-speaking freelancer, shop owner or founder who wants a modest site online quickly, with a domain and mailboxes included and fixed monthly prices. The test write-up calls it ideal for founders. The 5-subpage Basic plan is enough for a one-page presence, and the Plus plan's AI text and SEO tools suit someone with no copywriter.

The home page also runs a founder section titled "Starte jetzt durch: Dein Weg in die Selbstständigkeit" (start now, your path to self-employment), with basics for the founding phase, tips and step-by-step guides on getting online. That fits first-time builders who want guidance as well as a tool. The company's FAQ adds that viewing sites on the go keeps growing in importance, which is its argument for mobile-optimized templates.

The caveats are concrete. Basic's 5 subpages will be outgrown by anything resembling a catalog. Selling products means the SmartWebshop plans, priced separately from what this page shows. The pages are in German, so an English-language team should read the plan pages carefully before ordering. And nothing on these pages describes code access, so this is a tool for non-developers.